ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some ways in which those who live at borders attempt to exploit this unique locational ambiguity by building their lives and livelihoods around the particular resource which borders offer. It focuses on activities which are generally defined by the state as ‘illegal’, though they are not always so regarded by those directly involved. Anthropologists are no strangers to the study of illegal and semi-legal economic activity, which they have usually researched under the heading of the ‘informal’, ‘black’, ‘hidden’ or ‘shadow’ economy. Smuggling, prostitution and undocumented cross-border labour have been largely written out of scholarly views of the state, perhaps because of their perceived small scale or the difficulties of studying something which the state labels ‘illegal’, or because of their relative and inherent ‘invisibility’. Anthropologists have seldom had much to say about economic life at international borders. Border zones have been widely reported as providing opportunities for illicit sex.
